# We’ve been looking at India for the last five years. It would have to be a joint venture or a franchise. FDI allows us to own 26% of the operation and we have increased our efforts towards exploring the opportunity through our India representative, Husain Quettawalla.

# In Latin America, we are in four countries. The two most recent launches in Mexico and Brazil have done extremely well and have become profitable in less than two years, which is very good performance. When we look at the Indian market, we see some similarities. We are not likely to need a giant market share to become profitable.

# Where we stand out is that we are so focussed on our target audience—the young urban audience between the ages of 20 and 40. When I look at Indian readership figures for Indian newspapers, like The Times of India for example, I’m not scared to death with their readership to be honest.

# The main time we target our audience is during the morning when they have 15 to 20 mintues to read our paper. This is when people are entering the metro trains or are waiting for the trains. We distribute at university campuses, high schools and waiting rooms at hospitals—everywhere people have 20 minutes they could use in reading the newspaper. But in India, given that our target audience doesn’t really travel by the trains, we won’t be focussing on the public transport system. So the model will focus on distribution at traffic lights or even targetting people when they get out of movie theatres.

But in a country where most English dailies are sold at rock-bottom prices, does a freesheet stand a chance?